Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My questions will be directed to the deputy minister of Indigenous Services.
On the same line of questioning as my colleague from Quebec, related to housing, this is a systemic problem that the government has been aware of for generations. Before I was even born, my father had to build his own cabin in the northern part of Alberta, and we lived there. We lived there without clean water, and we lived there without power. We lived there without the basic things that many Canadians expect in a country as wealthy as the one we have. Throughout his time there, he eventually moved out of that house when he started to have children, and he attempted to get a government-sponsored house. Once he did, he already had four children, who ended up growing up in poverty. My oldest four siblings—I'm one of eight—during that time had many of the sicknesses that affected the community.
Housing is critical to health. Imagine if you had someone come into your house, which is overcrowded, with one bedroom and one bathroom, and there are eight people or 12 people living in your house, and then one comes home sick—you're all going to get COVID. That's what happened in indigenous communities across this country, because the housing crisis is real, and it's a massive indicator. The Auditor General even mentioned it in his statement. The Auditor General even mentioned in paragraph 9 of his statement that it was one of the criteria:
The pandemic aggravated pre-existing challenges in meeting nursing needs in remote or isolated First Nations communities. Several factors contributed to nursing shortages in many of these communities, including the national shortage of nurses, the challenging nature of the work, the diverse skill set required to work in remote or isolated communities, and poor housing.
That's a massive issue. If we've had these year-long plans year after year after year for the last 50 to 100 years, I'm not confident that this ministry has the ability to actually fix this plan. We need to know and we need to get down to the bottom of where it needs to be fixed. I'm interested in results and making sure that this doesn't happen again. I don't want to see more kids die. I mentioned in the last committee meeting that I've seen that.
I also want to mention in regard to the PPE supply that, when I was working in Alberta on behalf of indigenous groups, we actually met with the former minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and she committed at that time to supplying isolation units for northern Alberta communities. Zero were delivered. That wasn't in this report, though. Zero isolation units were delivered to any of the Métis settlements in Canada. Not one Métis settlement got an isolation unit, and the minister committed to that—I was on the phone with her—and people passed away.
I would like the deputy minister to comment.